Clipped from: Mycroremediation | How Fungi Can Restore Our Habitats - D.U.S. - Design Under Sky

Mycroremediation | How Fungi Can Restore Our Habitats

[Electron Micrograph showing the 'internet' of mycelium]

[Paul Stamets and giant fungi]

Mycelium, as Stamets says in his 2008 TED talk are the ultimate soil builders. The mother of trees. We are more closely related to fungi then any other kingdom. They are external neurological membranes, and this microbial universe gives rise to a plurality of other organisms. It is earth's natural internet, highly branched with alternative paths that cling to soil, decomposing matter and creating stability.

Clipped from: YouTube - Paul Stamets: 6 ways mushrooms can save the world

Clipped from: Mycoremediation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Mycoremediation

Mycoremediation is a form of bioremediation, the process of using fungi to return an environment (usually soil) contaminated by pollutants to a less contaminated state. The term mycoremediation was coined by Paul Stamets and refers specifically to the use of fungal mycelia in bioremediation.
[...]

Mycofiltration is a similar or same process, using fungal mycelia to filter toxic waste and microorganisms from water in soil.

Clipped from: Fungi Perfecti: Mushrooms and the ecosystem

Helping the Ecosystem
through Mushroom Cultivation

Growing Mushrooms=Creating Fertile Soils

Mycoremediation

From a piece of tissue the size of one tenth of your little fingernail, what we call a clone, cells can be grown exponentially into millions of pounds of mushrooms in as little as several months. More than 10% of the growing medium or "substrate" (straw, sawdust, compost, most agricultural and forest debris) can be converted into a protein- and vitamin-rich food. Not only are these mushrooms nutritious, they have demonstrated abilities in enhancing the human immune system, and they produce a slew of natural antibiotics. Yet it is the residual mycelium in that substrate that holds the greatest potential for ecological rehabilitation.

Clipped from: Mycoremediation Technologies

Mushrooms:
Higher Macrofungi to Clean Up the Environment

Potential applications for mycoremediation technologies include:

Agricultural waste reduction

Creation of buffer zones

Nonpoint source pollution reduction in watersheds

Contaminated sediment cleanup

Reduction of material relegated to confined disposal facilities

Decontamination

Minimization of contaminants from road runoff

Clipped from: Fungi Perfecti: road restoration and mushrooms

MYCOFILTRATION:
A NOVEL APPROACH FOR THE BIO-TRANSFORMATION
OF ABANDONED LOGGING ROADS

The Problem: Logging road networks such as this site in Northern California channel silt into salmon streams and impedes habitat restoration. Such roads are slow to recover. (Amaranthus & Trappe, 1993.)

Overlaying wood chips with wheat straw, after inoculation with mycelia. Note active siltation flow on right road surface.

Pleurotus ostreatus, the Oyster Mushroom, fruiting from mycoblanket four weeks after overlaid upon road surface at the Tahuya site.

After three years, an inspection of the reclaimed road showed a mantle of nearly contiguous mycelium at the wood chip/gravel interface, holding the sub-moraine together. One hypothesis is that the mycelium became resident in this zone, feeding upon the sheet flow of nutrified water along this interface. This photo shows an overturned rock which had beneath it a bed of mycelium. This sheath of mycelium extended for meters in all directions, securing the gravel in its grip.

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2010-03-07

Mycoremediation -- Using Fungi to Improve the Environment

Mycroremediation | How Fungi Can Restore Our Habitats

Mycoremediation